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Yup, nothing promotes the growth of a game like players refusing to play against each other as a result of unbalanced codexes causing one-sided games...

I have played 40k since 1989 and have seen all of the growth. I only really missed 4th edition.
I have played the “Hyper Competitive” environments and the complete opposite of just pulling out what ever models, putting them on the table and starting to play without even caring about points or anything.

After a two different tournament…incidents.
The first was about 3 month after the 2nd edition Space Wolf Codex came out and encountered a WYSIWYG fanatic who refused to play my Primer Grey Space Wolves, because they were not painted Space Wolf Grey.
The second was one really tight tournament where every rule seemed to be looked over at the start of 5th. There were at least two rules arguments that almost ended with fist fights. I finished my game and left the game store and went home pissed at everything. I looked at my shelves that my armies were that I had not played in almost a decade because they were not top tier units.
I decided that day I was going to just play what I wanted, not what I should. I got a handful of other players that felt that way and started to go and have fun. We generally field out favorite models and all of us are constantly trying to out do each other. Either we use different tactics or units, but we generally play the same core list.
This does not mean we don’t take the “Broken Things” like Bale-Flamer Heldrakes, we just don’t take three of them. We also ask things like “Are you planning on taking Flyers today?” or “Are you taking the Baneblade?” This tells us the rest of us what to expect.

As a small group our “Balance” is internal. If I say I am playing my Chaos Space Marines with a flyer they know it is going to be a Heldrake. When he says he is going to bring his Marines allied with Sisters of Battle I know there is going to be A LOT of Melta on the board, so me taking 3 Land Raiders is not going to overwhelm him.

Reading the article was a nice thing to see. It is the way we play, to adapt and overcome out opponent the next time after a loss. It seems we have been playing the game right after all of these years.

That is what I would call the Club method of playing.

You work out games in advance that are balanced, then your win or loss is likely to be close (i.e. more interesting for both sides) and brought about by luck and skill rather than having brought a particular powerful unit.

 insaniak wrote:
Yup, nothing promotes the growth of a game like players refusing to play against each other as a result of unbalanced codexes causing one-sided games...

Ask GW about "promoting the growth of the game" when it has never been more difficult to do so, whether because of ultra-competitive army lists, lack of balance amongst allies/fliers, and prohibitive prices.

 Anpu42 wrote:


As a small group our “Balance” is internal. If I say I am playing my Chaos Space Marines with a flyer they know it is going to be a Heldrake. When he says he is going to bring his Marines allied with Sisters of Battle I know there is going to be A LOT of Melta on the board, so me taking 3 Land Raiders is not going to overwhelm him.

Can I just point out that this is exactly what top tournament players do when they go to a major.

I have a good idea which lists each top player is currently using. The internet and podcasts give me this privilige if, as is becoming the norm these days, lists are not published in advance of the event.

This means that I can say "Oh Justin is taking Farsight Enclaves/Tau? That means he will be running O'Vesa star. I can counter that with these tactics" "Josh is running Beastpack Eldar? That is a tough match up for me so I will have to use this strategem I have been working on"

The only difference is that competitive play up to the level of each other and try to overcome difficult match ups because they enjoy the mental challenge, rather than playing down to the level so as to allow the opponent to take their loosely constructed list of models they like the look of and stand a chance. The example of playing sports with a child was a good one.

Competitive people in general enjoy the challenge of facing and then overcoming difficult situations. That's what tournaments are for.

/

As an aside, given the nonsense I read about Battle Brothers being the saviour of 40k Balance on the internet (Screamer Star, Serpent Spam and Tau gunlines await your Battle Brother changes eagerly) the internet community cannot as a whole be trusted to balance anything.

Oh, and I said it when it came out, but "Escalation" the name is a troll. GW see that 6th edition is an arms race. Deathstar 40k is a reaction to gunline 40k Tau and Eldar. Which was a reaction to Flyer spam 40k. D Strength weapons are just the next thing up bypassing re-rollable save Deathstars.

When I started playing in the 90's I always thought Jervis was the worst game designer they had. So over the years all their good designers left and who is the one guy left there, Jervis. Which is who I blame for the game rules being a total mess - reading gak like that interview just confirms my hypothesis.

When a GW game designer is asked about balance, he first thinks of his bank account

We wrote:
When I started playing in the 90's I always thought Jervis was the worst game designer they had. So over the years all their good designers left and who is the one guy left there, Jervis. Which is who I blame for the game rules being a total mess - reading gak like that interview just confirms my hypothesis.

Well it explains so much...its a bit like when the Simpsons went downhill...

But really, those quotes really have me understanding why 40K will get worse before it gets better, shame because i love the models, in the end prety much it will just be 85 pounds-a-pop units fighting on each side, not troops, tanks or even flyers...

WayneTheGame wrote:

Makumba wrote:
yes , it will . But I don't think they play the game they make at all or they play it in a such a drasticly different way then the rest of the world , that they don't see basic stuff.

That's honestly what I think - they play, but they play the game in a very strange way that's not indicative of how basically anybody else plays the game, so they don't see any issues because they never come up against it.

I recall once long ago I think it was an old White Dwarf article, and the details and author escapes me, that talked about how it was fun to see what new tricks your opponent came up with and then try to counter it and/or one-up them the next battle. That definitely seems to be how they seem to think the game should be played (all in good fun of course), but I think culturally they might also think that most people playing have a regular opponent or more that they are friendly with versus pick-up games and the like.

I have to admit though for all the flack I give them, that mentality explains a lot. People would IMO be less cutthroat or complaining about netlists/balance and the like if you were just playing with some friends in somebody's basement or garage or house and drinking a few beers, having a good time with whatever you decided to field in a balanced list versus the typical "Let me go to the local game store and see who's up for a game" or "Let me compete in this tournament for a prize" which tends to bring out the "It's a game, I want to win" mentality even indirectly.

Playing with the mentality that every player has access to unlimited amounts of every model in their armys codex like GW staff does, and that we have all bought them with the intention of being able to tweak and build counter list, for friendly battles, on the fly (and by "on the fly" I mean even up to the space of a couple of weeks to a month), is just silly for a tabletop game. Then taking into account the price that GW sells its products for (even in comparison to other wargames), this mentality goes from silly, to ludicrous.

Some players will do what I am going to do, just not bother with the new stuff.

If I did want to make a Knight Titan army I would use alternative kits. £85 is a ridiculous price for a wargame unit and it's another £25 for the book.

£110 to put one model on the table!

I can buy entire new games and armies for that kind of money if I want a change from standard 40K.

 Swastakowey wrote:

So you as a customer have a few choices. Move on as the product clearly isnt for you, put in the effort to make your mistake purchase worthwhile, sell it off to try make some of your money back or put up with it.

Thats how I see it and thats how it works in real world examples. Well here in NZ it does anyways.

If people follow your advice, 40k would shrink dramatically, GW would probably have to cut back on staff, or go out of business.

 insaniak wrote:
Yup, nothing promotes the growth of a game like players refusing to play against each other as a result of unbalanced codexes causing one-sided games...

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:


Ask GW about "promoting the growth of the game" when it has never been more difficult to do so, whether because of ultra-competitive army lists, lack of balance amongst allies/fliers, and prohibitive prices.

This is a fact, its hard to promote 40k. Its to expensive, to buy the latest models, just to get a balanced game in.

40k Should be about who's the best general. Not who has the most money.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Some players will do what I am going to do, just not bother with the new stuff.

If I did want to make a Knight Titan army I would use alternative kits. £85 is a ridiculous price for a wargame unit and it's another £25 for the book.

£110 to put one model on the table!

I can buy entire new games and armies for that kind of money if I want a change from standard 40K.

And most people will. This is why the 40k player base is shrinking.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
That is what I would call the Club method of playing.

You work out games in advance that are balanced, then your win or loss is likely to be close (i.e. more interesting for both sides) and brought about by luck and skill rather than having brought a particular powerful unit.

Which seems to rarely happen in the US. All of my games have always ever been pick up games at a game store where you rarely know who you might face. So the idea of a TAC is the only thing you can do, because you never know who will turn up for a game.

For all the talk GW has about "forging the narrative" I have never ever seen anybody do things like that. Usually the only conversation you get before a game is how many points, and sometimes if it's casual or competitive, and that's it. None of this "let's create a story behind the game" it's just two people wanting to play, each wanting to win and both wanting to have a few hours of fun.

The biggest mistake of GW is the assumption that balance an narrative game exclude each other. As Long as the same people continue writing rules, it wont get better.

The club scene is much stronger in the UK, or so it seems based on what people post on forums about "pay where you play" and so on. And my personal experience.

WayneTheGame wrote:
EDIT:

So, though it may surprise some people, my first concern with rules is always that they are a fair reflection of the background behind the model. Once we get that nailed down, and we're happy with the character of the rules, we then turn our minds to other practicalities: how long will it take people to figure out the best ways to use them? Will people be able to develop counter-tactics once they have played a few games.

Really? I find most of the Tyranid codex a bad joke based on this comment. Very few of the close combat units are reasonably represented by the rules. You would have thought that Tyranids MCs would have had the Rampage rule somewhere in their profiles. The idea that things like a hausperex and carnifex are no more skilled in close combat then the average Imperial Guard trooper, and that accurately reflects the background on these units is ludicrous. The entire idea that the Hive Mind doesn't genetically engineer the each model type to be excellent at a specific task (such as Venomthrope having a BS and a weak WS, or Hive Guard having the same BS and WS despite being specialized shooters) makes the statement even more drivel. And aren't Tyranids supposed to be highly adaptive, sure I read that somewhere, yet they have absolutely no adaptive rules.

Article is just another example of GW trying to fill space in a publication they aren't qualified to publish.

I choose my armies by what models look good, so naturally I have un-optomized lists. When I played regularly I lost a lot, but you get the feel for your army and can pull off some wins.

In any system where there are lots of units that need to be different, you are going to have imbalance. Add in the vagaries of terrain and mission, and you have a system that will never be even close to "balanced" as chess.

GW runs into problems because when they play test they never do the insane off the wall stuff that the WAAC players do. So they never consider an army with a 2++ rerollable, or a Tau army that gets all the special rules at will. Plus they have lots of internal pressure to make the new models good.

So their ability to appraise units cost isn't amazingly accurate, and their ability to update later isn't good.

So unless they switch to an online ruleset, they are stuck with stuff as published. That is bound to cause problems. No matter their attitude, until they make a change to their business model it will never improve.

Durandal wrote:
I choose my armies by what models look good, so naturally I have un-optomized lists. When I played regularly I lost a lot, but you get the feel for your army and can pull off some wins.

In any system where there are lots of units that need to be different, you are going to have imbalance. Add in the vagaries of terrain and mission, and you have a system that will never be even close to "balanced" as chess.

GW runs into problems because when they play test they never do the insane off the wall stuff that the WAAC players do. So they never consider an army with a 2++ rerollable, or a Tau army that gets all the special rules at will. Plus they have lots of internal pressure to make the new models good.

So their ability to appraise units cost isn't amazingly accurate, and their ability to update later isn't good.

So unless they switch to an online ruleset, they are stuck with stuff as published. That is bound to cause problems. No matter their attitude, until they make a change to their business model it will never improve.

Which is why they should have a "community preview" of rules, to let people playtest it outside of the Studio, that way they could get feedback like the Wave Serpent/Riptide/Heldrake are too cheap for what they do, or how Battle Brothers with certain armies breaks the game.

More reason why I think they just don't care. Their stance seems to be either you play the game as they intend it, or you can feth off with any critiques you have because you're "doing it wrong".

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:

You seem to be missing his point entirely - maybe absolutely face-smashing someone who has no chance to win is fun for you, but I doubt very much it's fun for the other person. Do you have fun playing against an army that you know can't hurt you? How is that fun or challenging? To me it's a waste of time. If I walked into my FLGS and saw some guy with a bunch of fliers that I knew my army had no chance against, I wouldn't play him. Like it or not, wargaming IRL is a social activity, one that is designed for both players to have fun with. If you're playing simply to have fun regardless of the whether or not your opponent is enjoying it, then maybe you should buy another army and play by yourself - apparently that seems to be the entire point of the game for you.

You seem to be missing my point entirely. What am I missing from Swastakowey's? Their point is "you don't need balance. You shouldn't try to have fun, you should play the game not to have fun, but to make it fun for someone else". What's the point of a game that you don't enjoy? I specifically said that I don't enjoy "absolutely face-smashing someone who has no chance to win", but 40k gives me a choice - handicap myself as I would if I were playing a game with a small child, or play it like a competitive wargame (which is what it is) and end up winning without trying at all.

 Retrogamer0001 wrote:
Do you have fun playing against an army that you know can't hurt you? How is that fun or challenging? To me it's a waste of time. If I walked into my FLGS and saw some guy with a bunch of fliers that I knew my army had no chance against, I wouldn't play him. Like it or not, wargaming IRL is a social activity, one that is designed for both players to have fun with. If you're playing simply to have fun regardless of the whether or not your opponent is enjoying it, then maybe you should buy another army and play by yourself - apparently that seems to be the entire point of the game for you.

Even though I answered this exact bloody question in my post.

Me wrote:As discussed in a recent thread that you may have seen, balance hurts friendly games a lot, too. A game should never make you actually feel bad because your list is just so fantastically powerful vs your friend's. The first time I brought a Heldrake, my regular opponent brought a mostly-PA SM army with zero anti-air beyond a lasPred. It wasn't fun for either of us until I straight up gave him an Icarus lascannon on his Bastion in the middle of the game and made sure to ignore the lasPred (which I could have easily taken out with my Land Raider's lascannons or my Forgefiend's autocannons/plasmahead or the Heldrake itself).

Me wrote:I want my friend to have fun. I don't really care so much if a random stranger has fun, although I would prefer it if they did. Going into a tournament scene or even just a random gaming store game, I don't expect to be treated lightly or like a friend. Yet in friendly games, I'm forced to actually limit myself so that the game can be fair and enjoyable.

loki old fart wrote:40k Should be about who's the best general. Not who has the most money.

This is pretty much what I mean. Not the most money, though, just the better army. There shouldn't be "better" armies! It's absurd!

 Frozen Ocean wrote:
I don't see how treating my friends as if they are small children is good for the game. Because that's what that is. It's when you purposely play games badly when you're playing them with small children, so you don't effortlessly crush them by virtue of being better in every single capacity.

My aforementioned friend does not know that I do this. He honestly believes that his wins or losses are on his own merit. What do I say to him? "I'm sorry, you suck. Here, let's Forge A Narrative by pre-planning our lists!"?

And, um, yes. It is about what I "want". I play the game to have fun, not as a service to someone else. I "want" to have fun, and I don't see why that's so much to ask. What does that even mean? Do I roll a Land Raider up to the only guy in his entire army with a powerfist and sit it there for a turn, so that he can have "fun"? Or do I play like I'm actually vaguely trying to win (which is the condition that both players are aiming for, because it's a wargame)?

I'm sorry if you think that even the slightest attempt at list-building is "super-lists". I'm not talking about Triptides or Fear Squadrons or Taudar or 2++ rerollable or Jetbike Councils or whatever. I'm talking about how it is absolutely stupid that I can beat a friend in a friendly game without even trying, just by virtue of my army being better than his and me actually enjoying putting some thought into my lists. How is this a good thing, at all?

I want to hear Jervis and friends' explanation of how an assault army can consistently and reliably 'adapt' to a shooty meta. These guys have ZERO accountability for their shortcomings. And to top it off, their noses are so high up in the air they c as nt even see what their customers are dissatisfied with.

The gravy train won't last forever kirby, jervis and co.
but I get the impression they honestly don't give a damn what their customers think.

sand.zzz wrote:
I want to hear Jervis and friends' explanation of how an assault army can consistently and reliably 'adapt' to a shooty meta. These guys have ZERO accountability for their shortcomings. And to top it off, their noses are so high up in the air they c as nt even see what their customers are dissatisfied with.

The gravy train won't last forever kirby, jervis and co.
but I get the impression they honestly don't give a damn what their customers think.

I think that's more they don't see the meta as being shooty, likely because they don't take things like 3x Riptides (outside of special situations like the battle report in the last "true" White Dwarf) or the like. I'd be willing to bet that however they play, assault armies deal just fine but whether that's because they just suck at listbuilding or deliberately hamper themselves for the sake of "narrative' I couldn't say.

You know the game is balanced by a point system. Everything has a point value. If you are going up against player A with army X, and you remember last time you guys played you slaughtered him, there is nothing stopping you to handicap yourself say 10% on the points side. Now same player with army Y might not need the handicap.

I have simply started keeping a list of who I play and what army they brought. If I have won the last 3 games we played I am simply gonna handicap myself 15%. If he beats me, then next time it might go to only 5%.

x13rads wrote:
You know the game is balanced by a point system. Everything has a point value. If you are going up against player A with army X, and you remember last time you guys played you slaughtered him, there is nothing stopping you to handicap yourself say 10% on the points side. Now same player with army Y might not need the handicap.

I have simply started keeping a list of who I play and what army they brought. If I have won the last 3 games we played I am simply gonna handicap myself 15%. If he beats me, then next time it might go to only 5%.

wat

That's not balance, that's shoddy rules that require you to handicap yourself in order to not slaughter somebody else. "Slaughtering" somebody else should never happen in a game, barring insane luck, unless that person takes outright ridiculous things (e.g. an entire army of Grots).

In what world does balance mean "I'm going to handicap myself to give you a fighting chance"?

WayneTheGame wrote:

x13rads wrote:
You know the game is balanced by a point system. Everything has a point value. If you are going up against player A with army X, and you remember last time you guys played you slaughtered him, there is nothing stopping you to handicap yourself say 10% on the points side. Now same player with army Y might not need the handicap.

I have simply started keeping a list of who I play and what army they brought. If I have won the last 3 games we played I am simply gonna handicap myself 15%. If he beats me, then next time it might go to only 5%.

wat

That's not balance, that's shoddy rules that require you to handicap yourself in order to not slaughter somebody else. "Slaughtering" somebody else should never happen in a game, barring insane luck, unless that person takes outright ridiculous things (e.g. an entire army of Grots).

In what world does balance mean "I'm going to handicap myself to give you a fighting chance"?

Isn't it exactly what you want GW to do for you?

To balance the game all they have to do is go through every codex and assign points to every unit to better reflect their combat effectiveness. So just do it yourself on a more personal level. Only this way you are also balancing your own generalship against your opponent as well.

x13rads wrote:

WayneTheGame wrote:

x13rads wrote:
You know the game is balanced by a point system. Everything has a point value. If you are going up against player A with army X, and you remember last time you guys played you slaughtered him, there is nothing stopping you to handicap yourself say 10% on the points side. Now same player with army Y might not need the handicap.

I have simply started keeping a list of who I play and what army they brought. If I have won the last 3 games we played I am simply gonna handicap myself 15%. If he beats me, then next time it might go to only 5%.

wat

That's not balance, that's shoddy rules that require you to handicap yourself in order to not slaughter somebody else. "Slaughtering" somebody else should never happen in a game, barring insane luck, unless that person takes outright ridiculous things (e.g. an entire army of Grots).

In what world does balance mean "I'm going to handicap myself to give you a fighting chance"?

Isn't it exactly what you want GW to do for you?

To balance the game all they have to do is go through every codex and assign points to every unit to better reflect their combat effectiveness. So just do it yourself on a more personal level. Only this way you are also balancing your own generalship against your opponent as well.

Yeah, more fool us, but when we actually buy gak from a company, most of us don't expect to have to fix it ourselves.

I would really like to add this one thought on this topic:

Throughout the course of human history, there has never been a single instance of a war that was "balanced". Think about drone strikes, or the conquistadors.

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
I would really like to add this one thought on this topic:

Throughout the course of human history, there has never been a single instance of a war that was "balanced". Think about drone strikes, or the conquistadors.

Then how come Nids don't play with a million points while others play at 2000? I mean if we go by fluff, no allies for Nids, and then talk about your Balance, Nids should at least play with 100X more points than his/her opponent.

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
I would really like to add this one thought on this topic:

Throughout the course of human history, there has never been a single instance of a war that was "balanced". Think about drone strikes, or the conquistadors.

There has also never been a war that was fun, so I guess the game shouldn't be balanced or fun.

People will sit in a room for hours at a time patiently and enthusiastically turning these sprues of unpainted plastic bits into the models on the box cover.

But altering any of the rules in the main book or the codices is absolutely going too far. GW is lazy hacks.

Not really gonna comment on anything else in this thread, but I gotta say the idea that it's okay to buy a toy that's not even put together for you, but it's not okay to fiddle around with the rules that go with it...is that irony, is that the word I'm looking for?

 melkorthetonedeaf wrote:
I would really like to add this one thought on this topic:

Throughout the course of human history, there has never been a single instance of a war that was "balanced". Think about drone strikes, or the conquistadors.

During the first Gulf war the A-10 Warthogs destroyed over 900 tanks. During the entire war only 7 A-10s were lost to enemy fire. If this was a table top game, which side would be having the most fun?

War isn't balanced, but a fun game in which both sides have a chance for victory is. I sometimes think that GW is not overly interested in a balanced game, they would almost rather have the 128 to 1 type game because it makes for a much more interesting story (depending on whos side your on).

 Badablack wrote:
People will sit in a room for hours at a time patiently and enthusiastically turning these sprues of unpainted plastic bits into the models on the box cover.

But altering any of the rules in the main book or the codices is absolutely going too far. GW is lazy hacks.

Not really gonna comment on anything else in this thread, but I gotta say the idea that it's okay to buy a toy that's not even put together for you, but it's not okay to fiddle around with the rules that go with it...is that irony, is that the word I'm looking for?

The purpose of buying a model kit is to build it up.

The purpose of buying a ruleset is to play it, not to rewrite it.

Though to be fair, 6th edition can easily be adapted into a more balanced format. Simply ban the use of allies, fliers and Escalation and Stronghold units. There will still be some unbalanced units but the worst cases will have been excluded and you will be back to a situation like 4th or 5th edition.

Whoever asked how are we to adapt our assault armies to a shooty meta... the simple answer is you are supposed to buy a shooty army!